Engineers, architects and graphic designers are increasingly using computer aided drafting tools and three-dimensional graphics programs. These tools have had a great impact on industries such as engineering design, the automobile industry, architecture, graphic design, game design, video production, and interior design, among others. These programs have been used for designing manufactured parts, designing buildings, used for training videos, visual elements in video production, mock-ups of interior design or building placement, and other uses. However, these programs typically lack a method for presenting their output in a traditional format.
Typical three-dimensional graphics tools allow for the output of movies, images, or sets of images. A designer might provide an angle, vantage point, and/or path. The program may then generate an image or movie associated with the vantage point or path. However, these formats are limiting in that they lack interactivity. A subsequent viewer has no control over the path of the movie or the vantage point of the image.
On the other hand, traditional presentation tools present material in a slide-based format and permit the inclusion of certain graphics objects. Typically, these presentation tools allow for a slide-by-slide or page-by-page presentation of material. Some elements within the slides may be provided with dynamic attributes. Typical presentation tools permit the inclusion of movies and two-dimensional graphic formats. However, they lack the ability to include interactive three-dimensional formats and further lack the ability to interact with three-dimensional environments. Moreover, these traditional tools lack a means of synchronizing data objects and providing interactivity between objects.
Other presentation formats, such as Web pages, also present a page-by-page means of presenting information. Hereto, attributes of text and traditional two-dimensional images may be provided with some form of dynamic characteristic. However, typically, there lacks an ability to interact with three-dimensional objects, synchronization between two data objects, control of data objects with buttons and other objects.
As such, many three-dimensional graphics tools and presentation tools suffer from deficiencies in providing interactivity with three-dimensional data. Many other problems and disadvantages of the prior art will become apparent to one skilled in the art after comparing such prior art with the present invention as described herein.